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‘54 Jet — Off-gassed

Take a look at the pickguard. I'm guessing that the laminate spacers started off-gassing and made the guard curl. Also check out the rot in the cutaway and neck heel. Do fumes settle? Otherwise very clean missing only the melita bridge. Neck heel separation. Listed as a '55 but really a '54. Two piece back too.

One of my Scripty Jets has a ripple developing on it's wedge guard. I'll have to check the pickup spacers, but I think they are the white/black laminate style as opposed to the tortoise celluloid, so they shouldn't be gassing.

My '59 Clipper came with a Melita bridge and had been stored a long time, maybe years. The bridge feet off-gassed onto the top leaving small scorch marks, a reaction between the plastic and the nitro top. You can see the rounded "foot print" of the Melita on the right side. This Jet is almost too clean; maybe years went by before it's case was opened up?

the photos of the pup surrounds up close almost make it look like the guitar was routed for larger pickups than dynas. probably just tricky photo angles messing with my eyes but i also dont see early jets often enough to be familiar with the dyna mounts. looks weird to me but what do I know

My old '53 Jet (Ed's since 2011) had tremendously bad offgassing from the rotting bridge pickup spacer. I immediately replaced the spacer cleaned it all up (lots of green gunk in the DeArmond pole adjustment mechanism, same story with my '56 6120). Yet, not a trace of weirdness with the pickguard or binding. Maybe it all comes down to chance, but the variance in the way these guitars age makes me wonder if the builders had some discretion in their methods and they weren't all built with the the same adhesives, etc.